Me too! Me too!

This is like filling out those questionnaire that fly all over social networking sites, but screw it. I’m sleep deprived and don’t really care. Blame Rivs (or whoever this person is if you want to follow the blame-chain). All you WoW bloggers look the same to me.

1. How long have you been blogging? What made you start? Who inspired you?

How do you fit three questions into one? *ahem* Sorry, knee-jerk reaction.

I have been blogging for almost a year now. I started blogging, when I started reading blogs more heavily, which came about as I was looking for WAR comics to be honest (Secret Lives of Mobs was probably the best). I felt I had something to contribute to the community, and I had recently made a shift in my gaming, so I figured it would give me a strong cause to champion, at the same time was a good starting pallet for it all. A few people. Rivs at Way of the Chosen (not just because he said I get his stuff when he goes) was a big part, his blog-roll was impressive, I really liked his commitment to the community, and his blog was enjoyable. Syp when he did his WAR blog, was always excellent (as BioBreak continues to be). Snaffy, at The Greenskin (now Snaffy’s Playground). Keen and Graev technically had a hand as well in getting me started, if only because I felt the internet needed some gaming stability to counter-act Keen’s self-admitted appearance of schizophrenic, millisecond long attention span when it comes to game. 

2. About how many hours a week would you estimate you spend on your blog?

Just writing on my own personal blog? Maybe 5-10 hours.

3. What kind of experience or background do you have with writing?

Nothing remotely professional. Not even close. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and have always been a member of the forums for whatever games I happen to be playing. Community is a big thing with me. Probably because all of my blood family is spread across the country, and I’m not in the town I grew up in, so long-time friends are no longer in touch.

4. Talk about how you come up with blog topics. Where do you get your ideas? What or who inspires you? Where and/or how do your brainstorming?

Wasn’t a part of this question already asked?

I steel as much content as possible from Tobold. Honestly, I get a lot of stuff from the forums. My next real design focused discussion is going to be specifically on the idea of separate tiers of scenario queues in WAR, the pros and cons of such a system. Also, I want to look into how this concept can be applied to MMOs in general, and if it is a sound enough idea to work across multiple games.

5. Do you have any blogging rules or guidelines you follow? Is there anything you will not blog about?

I also try to be as honest as possible. There’s no point in doing this if I’m not going to be forthright. If I start to bullshit or hedge statements to save face, I think most readers would pick up on it. As for topic’s avoided, I make no promises. I probably won’t write about the latest Hannah Montana episode, but it’s not outside of the bounds of possibility.

6. Do you have any sort of a publishing schedule in terms of day of week or topic? Where do you do your writing?

I try to put a post up every weekday. Sometimes I hit this, sometimes not. I also try to put stuff up on one day of the weekend out of the month. I split most of my posts between work and home, if while at work, it’s during my lunch break, or while I’m waiting on stuff to run in the background. A 700 word post takes me probably 25 minutes to write spread out over a couple hours sometime. One sentence at a time, which can lead to me sounding disjointed or rambly, but it’s the price I pay.

7. How many drafts of potential blog posts do you have right now? In what medium do you draft your posts? How often do you completely scratch or delete drafts or blog post ideas?

Zero. I tend to just leave the tab open on my browser until I finish it. I tend to be pretty decisive and know what I want to write about when I start the post. If I’m doing something ahead of time, I’ll usually write it in word then copypasta it to the Wordpress interface.

8. If you had to leave your blog in your will to another blogger, who would you choose? To ask this in a slightly less morbid way, are there other blogs that you feel are similar to yours in content, style, or voice?

Rivs really is pretty damn close to my own style and voice. But he’d get all WoW-talk on me, and then I’d have to zombie-bite his ass. I really like Syncaine to be honest. He gets all controversial, and loves to prod the sleeping giant, but his voice is significantly different from mine, but I think his gaming philosophy is somewhat similar to my own.  Still, he is great about keeping up with his readers in long strings of comments, and I appreciate that even more than his aggressive stance towards lazy, copycat MMOs.

9. Has anything surprised you since you started blogging?

I’m not a chatty person in general, but the amount of stuff I talk about, and how expansive it can be has been impressive. Even more so, and this will sound completely narcissistic, but I’m surprised at how much I’ve been able to take a critical eye to the genre and hobby and grow as a gamer.

10. What are your goals or plans for your blog going forward? Any specific goals or plans for your blog in 2010?

Keep going for another year. Other than that, and one or two rough ideas for posts coming up, that’s it. I’ll probably keep writing about WAR as it’s my primary MMO. It’s a super-casual PvP game, highly accessible, and one that I can jump into for an hour here and there, and still be good fun. It fits my life the best right now. If I had time, my MMO might switch. I absolutely fell in love with EVE when I played the trial. I fell hard, and a big part of me wants to make the transition to that game as my MMO, but I don’t have the time for it, and I love my guild in WAR. I also really want to try out Fallen Earth, and surprisingly, Darkfall. The urge to try Darkfaull is unexpected to me as I didn’t think that it’s adherence to some of the older paradigms of the genre would be appealing to me, but it’s dedication to it’s sandbox nature and overall vision is appealing to me, I just know that, like EVE, I don’t have the time commitment required for it.

But no, no specific goals other than to still be here (see rambly).

Aside: I’m a big fan of using parenthesis for making aside statements (excluding this one).

See what I did there?